About

Dear Sefine Colleagues,

As I have stated many times in my writings, the situation of exporting companies in Türkiye is getting worse with each passing day. Some circles attribute this to the wars that continued this year and the ongoing Iran–Israel–US tension. Others believe the real cause is the People's Republic of China, which makes extremely effective use of cheap labor and economies of scale.

Recently, a post by Mr. Engin Irmak on social media caught my attention. I found his observations so accurate that I would gladly put my own signature under them. I wanted to share it with you as well:

It wasn't China that hit Turkish industry. What hit Turkish industry was the habit of managing without measuring, person-dependent structures, decisions made without data, and a culture of just getting through the day. China merely accelerated the outcome.

In a professional career approaching 30 years, I have seen this very clearly:

A factory's real problem is rarely the machinery. With the same machines, in the same country, under the same economic conditions, and even with the same workforce, one factory can grow while another melts away. What makes the difference is decision quality, organizational discipline and culture. Over nearly 30 years, I have seen operations grow with the same workforce, production systems brought back to life, and capacity increases of 300–400%. When I take over the management of a factory, I barely speak in the first week. I observe. Because the true voice of a factory is heard on the shop floor, not in the meeting room. Every morning, before anyone has even pressed the start button on the machines, I do a Gemba walk. The pulse of a factory can be read in how people walk, in order and cleanliness, in the flow of work-in-progress, in how people treat one another. For me, production cannot be managed without looking the operator in the eye. Because sometimes a factory's most accurate data is not on the ERP screen but on the face of an employee who has gone quiet. By the end of the first week, the factory's X-ray emerges. In the second week, I combine the data, field observations and managers' views, and analyze the organization's strength, risks and potential. In the third week, I present management not just with a diagnosis, but with a real transformation roadmap that includes treatment, risks, side effects and a timeline. Because management is not just about setting targets.

Management is the ability to manage people, systems, culture and possibilities together. Türkiye's real problem against China is not low wages. It is decision quality.

The only observation I would add to this is that the agility of the Chinese government in managing processes is another important factor that completes the picture. In the evolving industrial world, China initially attracted foreign capital by leveraging its low-cost labor advantage, and in the process learned to produce goods it did not make by analyzing them through reverse engineering. Then, seeing that global competition was shifting toward high value-added production, it turned to fields such as chips, robotics and advanced technology.

Not content with that, and with the understanding that being a strong nation requires a strong defense industry and military, it accelerated its investments in the space industry and defense technologies, gaining significant momentum in the development of satellite systems and advanced military technologies. In short, countries that have closely followed global change over the past 40 years and adapted to all these transformations with agility are gaining a decisive advantage in global competition.

So, is our shipyard managed with agility? To be agile, a culture of agility must first be established within the company. The main components of this culture are: creating standardized yet flexible workflows; making agility measurable through digital infrastructure that supports production; being able to make fast decisions by taking initiative; integrating all units through cross-departmental collaboration; and keeping employees continuously up to date through training.

Frankly, we already achieve most of these, but there are also areas where we fall short. To be honest, if we were put to the test, I believe our shipyard would score at least 75 out of 100 for agility. In my view, our weakest point among these is still integration between business units.

Although we have consolidated many sub-units into a centralized structure with our new organizational chart to strengthen this area, approaching the issue only from an organizational standpoint would be taking the easy way out. To solve this at its root, we must sincerely set aside our prejudices toward one another and put our common interests first.

As long as we keep creating artificial agendas and constantly criticizing each other, going after people instead of going after problems, and looking out only for the interests of our own business unit while forgetting that collective wisdom serves everyone, we cannot speak of true integration.

As I always say, I ask all my teammates to take their own share from what I have written and to internalize how we can become truly agile.

I would also like to share some developments regarding our shipyard's current activities and strategic progress.

Since our last issue, we have successfully delivered our NB66 and NB68 projects to their owners. Despite the general slowdown and congestion in the sector, we are resolutely continuing our work in line with our strong operational capabilities and sustainable growth goals. In this process, we will keep adapting to changing market conditions, developing new strategies, and further strengthening our production and business development activities.

We took part in the biennial SAHA EXPO with the stand of TAIS Shipyards, of which we are a founding partner. During the fair, we were the only shipyard visited within the private sector by Canada's Secretary of State for Defence Procurement, Mr. Stephen FUHR. In the presence of the Secretary of State and our Deputy President of Defence Industries, Mr. Mustafa Murat ŞEKER, we held the signing ceremony of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between our Strategic and Unmanned Systems Research Center (SİSAM) and Canada-based Kraken Robotics for Katfish™ software integration and the development of Automatic Target Recognition (ATR). This attracted wide attention in the sector and the press.

It was also notable that we were again the only shipyard visited by Poland's Deputy Minister of National Defence, Mr. Paweł BEJDA. In addition, we had the opportunity to present our shipyard's facilities and capabilities to official and private-sector representatives from various regions, including the Gulf, and particularly the Naval Commands of Portugal, Romania and Azerbaijan, making it a highly productive fair for our shipyard.

We have carried out the steel cutting for the MUGEM Project (National Aircraft Carrier Project), which, once completed, will be the largest defense industry project in our country's history, and we have laid its first double bottom block on our slipway. We are continuing production at great pace.

This spring, our country has been receiving abundant rainfall. Our dams are filling up, and we will enter the summer without water shortages. I hope these fruitful months are a sign that our shipyard will achieve successful sales and secure new, profitable contracts for the rest of the year.